Kwon Shinje

Kwon Shinje is a visual artist whose practice is rooted in painting, and a musician who moves between soundscape and songwriting.

Her paintings are mainly composed with natural materials such as wood and hanji. She attaches hanji to wooden panels with paste, stains it with paint, and builds up multiple layers, seeking a rough yet human texture. The act of adding fragments becomes a way to visualize connection with animals, plants, earth, water, and many other beings beyond human boundaries.

This way of working began as the artist came into contact with nature and started to recognize herself as an organic life within nature's cycles. It is also grounded in the awareness that non-human beings are not essentially so different from herself.

One night, I was trudging home. I was the only person on the road, but countless insects were crying all at once. Each of them was announcing its existence to the world. Suddenly I realized: they and I were essentially the same. – Artist note (2023)

This awareness also extends into sound. After releasing Movie (2014), her first album of songs composed on acoustic guitar, she now makes music using sounds from varied sources. EARTH-ING (2024), which brings together the sounds of ice fragments colliding, insects, and virtual instruments, is one example.

My first interest in sound began in childhood, when I started paying attention to the sounds and sensations produced by my own body: the sound of air entering and leaving through my nose, the repeated vibration I felt near my throat, the faint resonance of blood flowing through vessels, and the sounds made as teeth brushed against the inside of the mouth. Listening to the sounds made by a living body, I imagined different rhythms and played by tapping the floor with my fingertips. – Artist note (on childhood)